This year's "soundscape" concept is based on the theme of sound, using sound-generating glass currently under development at AGC to create a space that enables visitors to experience everyday auditory phenomena in new ways. Up-and-coming architect Motosuke Mandai, whose works emphasize the rich relationships between architecture and people, served as a creative partner in this project.

The use of glass for windows, building materials, lighting, furniture and more in built spaces makes this soundscape concept possible. Sounds emanate from gracefully transparent glass, providing entirely new sensations for the visitor.

AGC has exhibited at Milan Design Week since 2015, with past showings including installations centering on human senses such as sight and touch. The company utilizes new innovations and ideas achieved through these fusions of design and technology in their research and development efforts.

AGC is a world leader in architectural glass, automotive glass and display glass. At Milan Design Week 2018, AGC hopes to offer new uses and possibilities for designers in the fields of architecture, interior design, product design and spatial presentation, while pursuing greater happiness and enjoyment in people's daily lives through advancements and new possibilities in the glass field.

Profiles of Creative Partner

This year’s Creation Partner is up-and-coming Japanese architect Motosuke Mandai.
His first architectural design after establishing his own practice was Oshika fisherman’s house, a Great East Japan Earthquake restoration project built as a center for restoring the fisheries industry in Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture. His desire was to create a new future for the town together with the residents, who would gather in this building. The result is a space that facilitates communication among and involvement by Ishinomaki residents. The interiors and installations have been designed so that the fixtures have been minimized both in form and presence - as far as practicable - as part of Mandai’s attempt to push the boundaries of what constitutes a building. He creates a space in which those entering the building encounter and experience a unique space filled with well-thought details in which there is a sense of floating.
Mandai has explored both the limits in which a building can, indeed, be a building and the rich and abundant relationship between buildings and people. He does not believe in coming up with designs that are deliberately unconventional but instead seeks out the ordinary within which a “new landscape” can be created. This mindset resonated with AGC Asahi Glass, which led to AGC commissioning an experimental installation depicting a new “Soundscape”.

Major works:
Oshika fisherman’s house, a center for the restoration of the fisheries industry in Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, devastated by the Great East Japan Earthquake,
Cutlery Shop KIYA Nihonbashi Main Store IZUTUKI
Exhibit of Food Templates – Dashi at ATELIER MUJI
Music of the Earth exhibition at ATELIER MUJI.

Reference Information

About the AGC Group

AGC Asahi Glass (or also called AGC, Registered Company name: Asahi Glass Co., Ltd., Headquarters: Tokyo, President & CEO: Takuya Shimamura) is the parent company of the AGC Group, a world-leading glass solution provider and supplier of flat, automotive and display glass, chemicals, ceramics and other high-tech materials and components. Based on more than a century of technical innovation, the AGC Group has developed a wide range of cutting-edge products. The Group employs some 50,000 people worldwide and generates annual sales of approximately 1.5 trillion Japanese yen through business in about 30 countries.

Sound-related Research and Development for Glass

Recent years have brought numerous changes and new demand in the field of spatial design, with novel products such as speakers that emit sounds, and light fixtures that emit light, from surfaces rather than single points, as well as new ideas including acoustic design in which sound seemingly rains down from the ceiling as a whole. These present new possibilities for glass, which is used in windows, walls, ceilings, floors, lighting, furniture, mirrors and a wide range of other applications. In response, AGC is pursuing R&D on the interrelationships between sound and glass, both in terms of blocking and generating sound, based on the company's technologies and knowledge in sound insulation and soundproofing fostered through many years of providing construction materials.

Milan Design Week

The “Milan Design Week”, one of the largest design festivals in the world, has been held every April in Milan, Italy since 1961. Approximately 1,000 events (Fuori Salone) in which designers and other creative people compete with unique designs are held simultaneously during the festival at various locations in Milan, and all of these events are now collectively called “Milan Design Week.”

Overview of AGC’s exhibition at Milan Design Week 2018